Nicaraguan journalist Sofía Montenegro.RR SS
The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo began this Friday evening with the first confiscation of the property of the 94 opponents, whom it revoked on February 15 of their citizenship and declared “traitors to the country”. The first occupied property was that of journalist and feminist Sofía Montenegro, a small apartment in Reparto San Juan in the capital, Managua. The condominium is called Amazonia.
According to police sources consulted by EL PAÍS, asset management officials, together with officials, seized the property of the renowned intellectual. But they weren’t limited to that. Although Montenegro was the only defendant in this group of houses, the Sandinista authorities informed the residents of the condominium that their houses were also being confiscated. All of the homes have been declared state property, and owners have been told that if they wish to continue living in them, they must pay a $500 rental fee to the state.
Other properties were also taken this Friday. Property officials came to carry out the confiscations, accompanied by police officers and people from the cadastre, who identified each private house. “In some places they are doing measurements through topographers,” a source from the Managua Mayor’s Office told EL PAÍS.
The opposition Irlanda Jérez party, which has also had its citizenship revoked by the Ortega-Murillo regime, denounced this Friday that the police had seized a property in the Los Ángeles neighborhood of Managua. “It’s a two-story building, a property that was owned by my father before the 1980s and later passed into my hands with the purchase more than 20 years ago,” the Express politician said.
EL PAÍS is aware that more seizures are underway tonight, although denatured exiles prefer not to comment to “protect their relatives” who occupy the properties in Nicaragua. The day of the confiscation commemorates La Piñata, the case of corruption and appropriation of public and private assets by Sandinista leaders before they left power in 1990.
On February 15, the regime ordered the revoking of the nationality of 94 Nicaraguans, extending the measure imposed on the 222 political prisoners exiled to the United States. These people lose their rights as nationals, are declared fugitives from justice and their property is ordered to be confiscated. The list issued by the Nicaraguan judicial system includes journalists, former diplomats, activists, human rights defenders, former MPs, former guerrillas, religious leaders, and prominent writers such as Sergio Ramírez Mercado and Gioconda Belli.
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